The "See You In September!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading online recently about a song and musical group from my past that brought back many good memories.  It was the end of my freshman year in high school and I was trying to figure out how I could make some  money so I could buy a car when I turned 16.  I already had a profitable business raising guinea pigs and selling them for medical testing, but that was hardly enough to buy a car, insurance and gas.  My bank account had a fair amount of money in it, but I wanted to pad it a bit more.  I had friends that were into buying 45rpm records with hopes of collecting maybe that one big hit that would give them a big payout when they resold it.  So, I took a few dollars of my guinea pig savings and began to buy a record or two whenever I could.  Wasn't long before I turned 16 at the end of the summer and got a job at the neighborhood Grant's Department Store working in the sporting goods and record departments.  Had to keep the shelves stocked as well as help customers looking for items related to either department.  I could buy vinyl records at a great price and even got to know the salesman who would from time to time give me a few records for my growing collection.  One of those records, "Green Stamps" by the T-Birds got me a nice price when I sold it to a local collector a few years later.  But the one record that I remember the most was a song called "See You In September" which was sung by a group from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania called the Tempos.  The song peaked at #23 by the end of 1959.  I had two of the records and just hung on to them.  The song was written in June of that year in a day and a few days later was recorded by the Tempos in New York City.  The record was cut a few days later and heard on WNEW out of New York.  It rose quickly and then dropped just as quickly by the end of the year.  But, a funny thing happened with the song when a group by the name of the Happenings redid the song in the spring of 1966.  Their version eventually reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 list.  It eventually got the Happenings a Gold Disc for selling a million records.  The song also became a hit in Brazil where it reached #1 on the chart for Rio de Janeiro in early 1967.  I eventually sold my two records I had that were recorded by the original group, The Tempos, but probably didn't get as much for them as if they had been recorded by the Happenings.  In the early 1970s I sold my entire record collection to a young photographer who happened to be the yearbook photographer for the high school yearbook which I was responsible for doing where I taught at the time.  Funny how one or two songs from the past always bring back memories when their titles pop up from time to time.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.